The long-awaited party last spring had been postponed twice, once because of the fires that devastated Northern California’s wine country.

“It didn’t seem right to celebrate when thousands of other Californians had lost their homes,”Cheese Board staff member Cathy Goldsmithexplained, adding that the collective had donated money to the fire victims. That concern for the common good is a core value of The Cheese Board Collective, which is owned by its workers, who all earn the same hourly wageand have an equal vote in decisions.

At its daylong party, the staffgave away 7,000 pieces of pizza, 3,000 mini-scones, and 1,500 open-face cheese sandwiches, along with espresso, buffalo milkice cream, and organic strawberries.The entire block was closed, a giant cheese was sliced and served up, and bands playedeverything from blues to bluegrass.Across the street, a banner hungfrom Alice Waters’ Chez Panisserestaurant congratulating the Cheese Board on its anniversary.

“This bread is just like what you’d get in France,”one young reveler shouted above the music to a friend, brandishing a piece of a sourdough baguette like a scepter. “And I’m from Paris, so I should know.”

A Cheese Board fan enjoys free pizza and sandwiches at the 50th anniversary party

D.Hembree

“Amazing and completely unexpected” is howGoldsmith, the Cheese Board’s communications director,describes the awards. A24-year veteran of the collective, Goldsmith --like other employees-- alsobakes, preps, works the cash register, mops thefloors and generally serves as a jack of all trades.Noting that Yelp ratings come directly from customers, she said the collective washonored that its fanswent to bat for them on social media.

The award was an affirmation of the pizzeria’slow prices,innovative organic recipes and fun atmosphere --including live music at lunch and dinner.“We try to keep things fun and playful by coming up with new products, likethe peach and ricotta pizza,” Goldsmith said. “It keeps you from becoming stagnant.”

In keeping with its anti-advertising bent, the Cheese Board doesn’t display the 2016 Yelp awards.Judging by the line of pizza aficionados stretching around the block, it doesn’t need to. A few days after the party, the pizza shop and its outside tables were packed with diners listening to the band AhSa Ti-Nuplay jazzy renditions ofblues, reggae and R&B tunes. Many Cheese Board employees are artists or musicians – there’s even an in-house band called the Cheese Board Clerks – sohosting live music is a natural way to support both artsand artists.

Musician AhSa Ti-Nu Ford, who plays regularly at the Cheese Board pizzeria, says the potato and onion pizza is her favorite.

Credit: AhSa-Ti Nu Ford

“I love performing there; it’s a great placeto showcase your work,” said lead singer and pianist AhSa Ti-Nu Ford, an Oakland-based performing artist.“The people at the Cheese Board love music; there’s a sense of community, and they really take care of us.”Unlike some venues that encourage musicians to play for tips alone, theCheese Boardpays musicians by the hour. As extra perks,theband members also get tips and all the pizza and extras they can eat.

Secrets of its success

The Cheese Board began in 1967in a tiny storefront near another local icon – the original Peet’s Coffee & Tea. It became a collective in 1971 when the original two owners decided to sell the store, at cost, to six employees. “That was the original gift of generosity and love,” said one of its members in The Cheese Board Collective Works. Today, the Cheese Board has two large adjacent storefronts -- one selling cheese, sundries and fresh baked goods, the other selling pizza –and a staff of 60 worker-owners.

So how did the Cheese Board manage to survive – and thrive – when many collectives that started around the same timehave closed their doors?Employees credit the collective’sendurance, in part, to keeping a close eye on the bottom line. “We were always pro-consumerand pro-business,” says Goldsmith. Other local businesses are supportive, even though a few grumbled, at one point, about the Cheese Board's policy of giving out free sandwiches to people who couldn't afford to buy them. The collective's pro-business stance ledsome other collectives to criticize the Cheese Board for being bourgeois, but members knew they weren’t exempt from market forces. “This seems like an impossible business model, but it works, and it works very well,” said Charlie, a longtime member, on the collective’s website.

The Cheese Board also benefitedby givingeveryone room to tinker and experiment. One Cheese Board worker tried adding fresh sourdough baguettes to enjoy with the cheeses, and whilehis very first baguettes were “sour and terrible,” according to one member, they soonimproved enough to start a bakery.

Another turning point occurred during the recession of the early 1980s, when Cheese Board bakers started making their own pizza lunches by combining hunks of leftover sourdough bread, some favorite cheeses off the counter, and fresh tomatoes and veggies from the grocery next door.

“They were so good we finally thought, ‘Hey, why not sell these?’” said Goldsmith. “During the recession we sold tons and tons, and the profit on pizza is pretty amazing.”

The store's blackboard includes a list of 300 to 400 cheeses.

D.Hembree

The Cheese Board’s collective structure also attracted workers interestedin itsvision of operating without a formal hierarchy, in the most egalitarian way possible.At the same time, it managed to avoid being doctrinaire or exclusive.“When one prospective employee asked if she had to agree with ‘all those posters and signs in the front of the shop’ to work there, we all told her, ‘Of course not,’” former member Craig Knudsen recalled in The Cheese Board CollectiveWorks. “She wouldn’t have worked here unless we had said that.”

As it grew, the collective sprouted committees to deal with everything from finances and human resources to cheese, production, health and “the big picture.” It provides its worker-owners with a livingwage, vacation, sick leave, bereavement leave, health insurance, life insurance and retirement benefits. Workers who retire can even attend its monthly and quarterly staff meetings as non-voting “emeritus” members.

To Art Toczynski, an Argentine immigrant who arrived in the United States as a teen, the Cheese Board became a full-fledged family. “We had get-together on the weekends where our babies and later our kids would play together; we went through joy and crises and loss together, like something in a Greek tragedy,” he said. “The result waslifelong, enduring friendships.”

Looking back over his 34 years at the Cheese Board, the baker and former soccer coachmused, “I never thought of it as going to work; I felt like I was going to play. Not to say it wasn’t hard work…You get up to bake at 3:30 a.m.”

Baked goods include delectable baguettes, scones, muffins, cookies and crumpets, as well as foccacia, challah, whole-grain rolls, and pita bread

Credit: D.Hembree

At the time the Cheese Board became a collective in 1971, another Berkeley institution was also starting upnearby – Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse restaurant. Waters launched a culinary revolution by offering fresh, local, organic ingredients. Together, the two outfits, located on the same block of Shattuck Avenue since 1975, have been at the forefront of the movement toward sustainable foods. In her introduction to The Cheese Board Collective Works, Waters calls theCheese Board “the one indispensable institution in the North Berkeley neighborhood where I live.”

It has created a community bigger than itself, Waters wrote. “Where else could I find…such a lively and thrilling throng of people, all drawn by the irresistible good smells of baking bread? Everywhere there is greeting and gossiping and babies crying…Nothing boutiquelike about it. And I can always count on a hug and a kiss from a friend behind the counter.”

Across the street from the party, Chez Panisse congratulates the Cheese Board on its 50th

Cheese Board Collective

The high-end Chez Panisse and the bustling Cheese Board may seem like studies in contrast, but Goldsmithagrees they’ve always had a great relationship. “Some people were surprised Alice Waters was friends with those ‘crazy collectivists’—especially one night in the seventies when a couple of people from Cheese Board streaked naked throughChez Panissein the middle of the dinner service,” Goldsmith says with a laugh. “But she was so incredibly supportive of us from the beginning.”

A powerhouse behind the scenes

The collective has used its business acumen to help other like-minded collectives. In 2014, it helped struggling Inkworks Press, a Berkeley print shop, by buying its building and thenleasingit back at an affordable rate. (Inkworksdecided to closein 2016.) The Cheese Board also trained a new generation of bakers and helpedlaunch five Arizmendi bakingcooperatives (named for a priest who founded the Spanish Mondragon Cooperatives)scattered around the Bay Area.

The collective holds fundraisers and makes regular donations to good causes, including hurricane victims in Puerto Rico and legal help for detained immigrants. It has also worked to make Berkeley greener and more community-minded by promoting“parklets” – small nooks carved into a street where trees, tables and benches break up the concrete andact as magnets for conversation.

Ursula Schulz in a Cheese Board photo from the 1980s

The Cheese Board Collective

The parklet outside the Cheese Board’s pizzeria features a series of beautiful mosaics surrounded by a green island of plants, the handiwork of Ursula Schulz, an artist who has worked at Cheese Board since 1980. Banners from the anniversary show her as a young woman with a baby on her hip; nearly 40 years later, she cuts an elegant figure, wearing an apron over a flowered blouse. Asked what kept her at the Cheese Board all these years, she dusts the flour off her hands and leans against the counter to think. “Because I have a say,” she says finally. “My coworkers may not agree with me, I may get outvoted, but I have a say.”

Today, the collective faces more changes, such as expanding into an adjoining storefront (the owner of the longtime grocery next door retired). It also faces new challenges, including Bay Area’stech boom, whichhas caused housing prices and rents to soar. This has made it harder foreveryone, especially newCheese Board workers, to afford sky-high rents and house payments.

Ursula Schulz at work in the Cheese Board in fall 2018

D.Hembree

“For years, you could work here part-time and spend the rest of the time on your art, music or another passion,” says Goldsmith. “Now that’s almost impossible.People increasingly have to work longer hours. And housing costs are so high thatyoung employees have to live outside Berkeley and commute a long way to work. It’s very tough.”

Meanwhile, she and the older generation of Cheese Board employeesare trying to decide when and how to pass the torch.

“We’re so lucky to get up in the morning and do what we mostly love. But just as Wendell Berry told people to be good stewards of the land, we have to be good stewards of our ideals,” she said. “We need to pass the business on to the next generation without holding on too much. It’s a complicated dance.”

She is a currently a full-time science writer and finishing a Master of Science degree in sustainable agriculture at Green Mountain College.